


be a burning star if it takes all night

by Pidonyx



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Jet is mentioned, M/M, Star Wars AU, THE KILLJOYS ARE NOT MCR, h. anyways, i get nervous abt writing Jet bcs he’s. an angel and i’m gonna fuck it up, i have completely lost my mind apparently, i messed w the interpersonal relationships a tad n altered the dialogue and now they say bad words!, including dumb Star Wars concepts, its. its hanleia but w funpoison instead, like. LITERALLY. like they r the movie characters because I am embarrassing, u guys know Star Wars I assume I don’t have 2 explain the plot of the main trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23852056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pidonyx/pseuds/Pidonyx
Summary: 5 things Party Poison learned about the last Prince of Alderaan, and 1 thing he learned about himself in the process.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul/Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 36





	be a burning star if it takes all night

**Author's Note:**

> aaa ok ok im coping w all of my work for college by watching star wars bcs im gay and this concept would not leave me alone until i wrote it so here it is i genuinely tried to make this not awful
> 
> i continue to top myself in just how self indulgent i can be i honestly dont even know if anyone will read this but here we go anyways
> 
> title from save yourself i’ll hold them back by my chemical romance

I.

Party Poison’s first impression of the Prince is a 5’2” whirlwind of dark hair and flashing eyes that storms out of the cell behind Kobra, immediately snatches the blaster out of his hands, and fires several shots at the stormtroopers blocking their exit before blasting open a grate and demanding that Poison get “into the garbage chute, flyboy,” before jumping down it himself. If it weren’t for the several preceding insults thrown his way, Poison almost thinks he could’ve liked him — and begrudgingly voices as much to Kobra, before diving into the chute himself. As it is, his ego is bruised and as soon as he hits the ground, hidden by about three feet of water and refuse, he doesn’t really spare the Prince’s appearance much thought in favor of yelling along with everyone else in the garbage compactor.

It’s not until later that he gets the chance to really talk to him face to face, and he realizes, dismayed, that the Prince —  _Fun Ghoul_ , because upon hearing the names “Party Poison” and “Kobra Kid” he had grinned and claimed an alias as well, because  _“well, it’s not like anyone who really matters is going to be around to care about my real name anymore, you know?”_ — was, in fact, very pretty. Even though he seems stuck in a perpetual eye roll every time Poison is in the room. And maybe that’s because Poison makes a point of being particularly  _Poison_ every time they have to occupy the same space. But  _still_. Wide, gently slanting brown eyes, long raven hair, and, on the rare occasion Poison sees him smile — not ever  _at_ Poison, mind — dimples. Well, dimple, singular, because there’s a still sort-of-fresh scar against the corner of his mouth that drags up his cheek, from the imperial interrogation droids on the Death Star. 

He doesn’t get to interact much with him — possibly because he made such a poor first impression that resulted in a cold dismissal from the Prince, a screaming match with his brother, and Jet and Poison leaving by themselves, even if he’d ultimately ended up cursing and turning the  _Firebird_ around to go to the aid of the Rebel base. But Kobra had instantly clicked with him somehow, and they huddle in various corners around base constantly, giggling and painting each other’s nails or some shit. Kobra can’t seem to shut up about how nice he is, how funny, and how much fun they have together, and Poison’s getting a little sick of it — and fine, maybe it’s a little due to the fact that he hasn’t been privy to any of that, and instead gets wary glances and sarcastic remarks. “Sithspit, Kobra, why don’t you just fucking propose, already?” He snaps, one day when he’s already had to sit through two strategy meetings that he shouldn’t even be a part of, because they shouldn’t even  _be_ here, and Kobra is going on about something or other that he and Ghoul did that Poison couldn’t care less about, but Kobra just cuts himself off, gives Poison a knowing look, and breezes out of the room. Poison feels a little abashed, but really, he thinks, it’s not like what he said was unfair, so he just turns back to the starship specifications he was examining before and tries to put it out of his mind.

And if Poison thinks — quietly, to himself — that it’s a shame that Ghoul really doesn’t like him because Poison doesn’t think he dislikes  _Ghoul_ , actually, well, no one has to know.

II.

It’s when they’ve just started to become friends, still in a kind of shaky stage where they have a tentative truce, and sometimes even sit next to each other on Yavin II and watch the stars, familiar light, unfamiliar constellations, that Poison learns about Ghoul’s home planet. Alderaan. Which is now gone, forever.

“Right there,” Ghoul says, pointing at a faint star almost directly over their heads. “You can still see it here. The light from the explosion hasn’t reached this planet yet.” His voice is carefully neutral, and when Poison turns to look at him he’s looking anywhere but Poison’s face. 

Poison extends a hand, hesitates, then places it on Ghoul’s shoulder. He earns a small, strained smile in response, so he figures that was the right move. He opens his mouth, shuts it again, then starts, “So, um. Do you...want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Ghoul mutters, leaning back on the ferrocrete platform they’re on and closing his eyes. Poison leans back too and then they’re lying side-by-side in the open, humid air, looking up at the stars and the ghost of Alderaan. For a while, it’s quiet except for the sounds of the jungle around them, various native fauna calling out or walking through the underbrush. 

“You could tell me about your family,” Ghoul says, out of the blue, voice quiet. Poison takes a breath, lets it out, tapping his fingers absentmindedly against his thigh.

“Well. It’s really just...me and Kobra. You know we’re from Corellia? Our parents died a couple years after Kobra was born, and we didn’t really have anywhere to go, so we lived on the streets. And then as soon as I was able, I stole a starship, and left. And I left Kobra behind. Or, I tried to take him with me, but he got caught. And so I left, and I promised myself I’d go back for him as soon as I could, and I did, and now we’re here.”

It’s a  _heavily_ paraphrased version of his life up to this point, but his jaw feels tight even saying that much and he barely knows Ghoul anyways. Next to him, Ghoul shifts. Hesitates. 

When he speaks it’s halting, gradually picking up speed the longer he talks. “My mom was involved in the Rebellion. My parents sent me off to boarding school. Back home. But it didn’t take.” It’s phrased like it’s meant to be a joke, but neither of them laugh. “Don’t think they were trying to get rid of me, just keep me safe, ‘cause as soon as I got home, they weren’t mad, just asked if I’d like to be a senator, and when I said yes, they trained me and shipped me off-planet to the Galactic Senate. I don’t think they knew Alderaan was going to be destroyed. But I think they knew something was going to happen, eventually. The Empire gets to  _everyone_ eventually.”

Poison turns his head to see Ghoul looking back at him. His mouth is tilted in a little, humorless smile. He tugs at his sleeve, and Poison looks down to see a tattoo, on his forearm. 

“‘S the constellation that was at the highest point in the sky the day I was born. I didn’t get it, really, to remember Alderaan, ‘cause, y’know, I didn’t know it was going t’ get blown up when I got it. But ‘s a good reminder, now, I guess.” He rubs his thumb absentmindedly over the design. “I always wanted to get more, but I didn’t think my parents would approve. They didn’t know about this one. Guess it doesn’t matter now, though.”

There’s a lost expression flickering over his face, and he turns his attention back to the sky. Poison looks back up, too, finds the dim light of Alderaan again where Ghoul had pointed it out.

_“You’re braver than me,”_ Poison wants to say, but Ghoul stays silent, so he says nothing.

III.

Poison knows, from experience, that Ghoul is stubborn. But it doesn’t really  _click_ for him until they’re suddenly fighting.  _All the time_.

It’s not that he can’t figure out what he did, because the answer is obvious. He’d decided, one day,  _fuck it_ , and had made what was, in his opinion, a  _very_ subtle pass at Ghoul, just something like  _“hey, sweetheart, going my way?”_ and Ghoul had stiffened and given him a nasty glare and then hurried off down the hall. 

And yeah, Poison feels bad about it — not least because that was just about the worst possible reaction he could have gotten — but because he’s Party Poison, he can’t fucking drop it, and instead escalates every time until he’s kissing Ghoul’s knuckles and calling him “your highness” all the time just to see him snatch his hand away and mutter something barbed.

It doesn’t mean he’s  _happy_ about it.

He’s just finished telling the General that he and Kobra and Jet will be leaving as soon as possible, sorry sir, but there’s a bounty on our heads, please and thank you, and we’ll be taking the  _Firebird_ with us, and he can see Ghoul huddled over some screen in the corner, pointedly ignoring him. As soon as he takes his leave from General Rieekan, Poison meanders over.

Ghoul looks up at him, probably instinctively, as he approaches, cheeks flushed from the cold of the ice base, hair braided away from his face, and Poison’s mouth goes dry despite himself.

Suddenly, this seems monumental, and the glib remark that was at the tip of his tongue dies in his throat. He settles for halfway, saying, “Well, your Highness. I guess this is it.”

Ghoul’s poker face doesn’t break. “I guess it is.”

Poison swallows the sudden, violent wave of disappointment that surges up, and he scowls, spitting, “All  _right_ , no need to fucking get mushy on me. So long, your  _worship_.”

Ghoul yells his name after him as he storms into the corridor, sounding pissed off, what else is new, but Poison doesn’t stop until Ghoul’s grabbed the sleeve of his coat, jerking him to a halt. He’s red in the face, from exertion or anger, Poison can’t tell which. 

“What?” He snaps, shaking Ghoul’s hand off his arm. 

Ghoul looks frustrated, like Poison’s the one being difficult. “I thought you all had decided to stay.”

“Yeah? Well guess what, we’ve got a fuckin’ debt to pay off,  _your highness_ , and I don’t want my little brother and best friend dead just because one time I decided to do the right thing, and got us tangled up in something way bigger than any of us has any business being wrapped up in,  _alright_?”

Ghoul makes a noise, throwing his hands in the air. They jerk towards his hair, but he seems to remember that it’s pinned up because he simply clenches his gloved hands into fists and brings them back to his sides. “Poison, we _need_ you.”

Poison grins, and he can feel it, sharp and unhappy across his face. “ _We_ , huh? What about  _you_?”

Ghoul goes still, scowling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Poison laughs, shortly. “Of course you don’t.”

Ghoul’s jaw is clenched, there’s a muscle jumping in the corner. “What  _exactly_ am I supposed to know?”

Poison gives him a rather nasty smile. “Aw, sugar, don’t you want me to stay because of the way you feel about me?”

Speaking through gritted teeth, Ghoul crosses his arms. “You’re a good leader, and an asset to the Rebellion.  _That’s it_. You’re  _imagining_ things.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hey, if that’s true, why are you following me then?” Poison flashes his teeth one more time then turns away to walk back to the hangar.

“You’re impossible!” Ghoul yells behind him, and Poison waves a hand in the air dismissively.

“Takes one to know one, doll,” he yells back over his shoulder, cursing him and the entire stupid Rebellion under his breath as he rounds the corner. 

IV.

The next thing he learns is something he honestly never expected to have the chance to. The  _Firebird_ is quiet, emergency lights blinking softly in the darkness of the cave they’ve landed in, drifting through the asteroid field. 

Poison weaves through the labyrinthine corridors of the  _Firebird_ , rounding a corner to see Ghoul, pulling a welding torch away from the valves in the wall, and moving to reengage the system with the attached lever. He struggles with it for a second, but as Poison steps up, reaches to help him, Ghoul gives him a glare and elbows him in the ribs. 

Poison squawks, rubbing at his chest. “Hey! I was only trying to help, this is  _my_ ship!”

Ghoul glares at him again, though it’s definitively less frosty this time. “I don’t need your help.” He wrestles with the switch for a few seconds more before he gets it unstuck and snaps it down into place. He curses, bringing his hand up to his mouth. “You make things so difficult sometimes,” he mutters around where he’s sucking the blood away from a cut on his palm.

Poison can concede that point. “Fine. Maybe I do.” He hesitates, bitterness coating the back of his tongue. “You could be a little nicer to me though.” 

Ghoul glances up at him, eyebrow raised. 

Poison tries not to sigh too exasperatedly. “Admit it. C’mon. Sometimes you think I’m alright.”

Ghoul suddenly looks like he’s tamping down on a smile, and Poison’s heart leaps. “Sometimes. Maybe. When you aren’t acting like a shameless flirt and a douchebag, then yeah, sure.”

Poison can’t help but grin, a genuine one. “Alright.”

He takes Ghoul’s hand, inspecting the cut. It’s fairly shallow, and it’s already stopped bleeding. Still, they should probably wrap it. The  _Firebird_ isn’t exactly the cleanest starship in the galaxy. 

“Stop that.” Ghoul’s voice sounds funny, and Poison looks up at him. Ghoul’s avoiding eye contact again, staring at the corner of the room. 

“Stop what?”

“ _Stop that_ _,_ ” Ghoul grits out. “My hands are dirty. Fuck’s sake, Pois.”

Poison furrows his brows. “My hands are dirty too.” He takes in Ghoul’s body language, the tension in his jaw and neck, the way his hand is trembling slightly in Poison’s. He narrows his eyes. “What’re you scared of?”

Ghoul’s eyes snap back to his, sparking. “Scared?”

Poison squeezes his hand, careful not to touch the open wound on the palm. “You’re kinda shaking.”

“I’m not,” Ghoul says, and it sounds like a challenge, eyes wide. 

Poison tugs on his hand, experimentally, and Ghoul doesn’t pull back. He lets Poison draw him closer, and Poison’s pulse is beating out of his throat. 

“I think,” Poison says, running his thumb over the top of Ghoul’s hand, voice cracking just a little. “I think you like me because of those things.”

Ghoul laughs, but it’s soft and breathy and Poison can’t believe this is happening, feels like any second he might wake up under a blanket on Corellia with Kobra curled up beside him and realize the last few years of his life have been a very complicated and drawn out dream. Ghoul lets Poison pull him even closer, until Poison can feel the warmth of his breath hitting right below his lip. “And what if I told you I like nice men?”

“I’m nice,” Poison mumbles, swaying forwards.

He sees the edge of Ghoul’s mouth twitch up in a smile, twisting his scar, hears him say, “No you’re not, asshole,” even as his eyes are closing and Poison’s eyes are closed too and he’s kissing Ghoul and Ghoul is kissing him back, crowded up against the pipes with a hand gripping the back of Poison’s jacket. 

Ghoul tilts his head, and his mouth is moving gently, and Poison is shaking, too, not wanting to mess this up, not wanting to waste what may be the one chance he has to kiss him. 

But even after they’re interrupted, and Ghoul goes back to the cockpit while Poison scurries off to the back of the ship to fix the reverse power coupling with Jet, Ghoul doesn’t close off like Poison expected him to. In fact it’s almost like the opposite happens, like Poison found a key he didn’t know he needed and now suddenly Ghoul doesn’t mind touching him, or letting him wrap his hand for him, or kissing him on the cheek, even. 

And Poison gets to kiss him again, on Bespin, in their suite in Cloud City when they still think they’re safe, and then again right before they put him in carbon freeze and Ghoul says  _I love you_ and Poison can’t say it back, not when he might not survive the next few minutes, not when he might have to leave Ghoul alone, so he just holds his mouth to Ghoul’s as long as they’ll let him before the stormtroopers pull him back, and he chokes out, “I know,” before he’s swallowed in steam and blackness and he can’t remember anything after that. That’ll be something to look forward to saying, if he survives the carbon freeze, if he gets to see Ghoul again. 

And he does, retching on a cold floor, disoriented and bleary, and he can’t  _see_ , but a voice is telling him to breathe, that he is free of the carbonite, and he murmurs, shakily, “Who are you?” Then Ghoul’s voice is there and he can feel Ghoul’s mouth on his, just as warm and safe-feeling as the first time, and even if they’re re-captured immediately after, it could be worse, because Ghoul feels like home.

V.

Poison’s dressing Ghoul’s shoulder, layers of green and brown camouflage pushed aside to reach the blaster wound, when the space station above them in the sky over Endor explodes in a fireball of orange and red clouds. 

Poison freezes, looks up at the dispersing wreckage, visible through the small moon’s atmosphere. A hand covers his, and he looks back down to see Ghoul meeting his eyes with a steely expression. 

“Kobra wasn’t on it when it blew,” he says, calmly confident. His eyes drag back up to the sky, to the slowly spreading explosion. “He’s safe.”

There’s something in his voice, and it’s like he can’t look away from the sky, from the supernova of flames that was the second Death Star. Poison’s stomach drops.

“You— do you love him?” Poison blurts. 

Ghoul looks at him, raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Poison tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut, the sickening sense that he’s somehow gotten this all wrong, he’s fucked up somewhere, oh,  _fuck_ , but it’s worth it if it makes two of the people he cares most in the galaxy about happy, so he forces out, “Alright. When— when Kobra gets back, I won’t get in the way. I want. I want you to be happy. And I want Kobra to be happy.”

Ghoul stares at him blankly. “ _What_ _?_ ” He squints at him, mouth twisting up, and then his expression clears and he laughs, eyes scrunching at the corners as he grins. “Poison. For  _fuck’s_ sake.” Then he kisses him, which is as confusing as it is welcome. “Mother of moons, you’re stupid. He’s like a  _brother_ to me, Pois, why the fuck would I be kissing you on the mouth if I didn’t like you like that, fuck.”

“Oh,” Poison says, trying to think of something else to say. “Okay.”

Ghoul rolls his eyes at him, but it’s not malicious like it would have been, back on Yavin II, and it’s accompanied with a fond smile. And then Ghoul kisses him again, so Poison figures that’s all right. 

+1

It’s not so much a realization as it is something slowly slotting into place. It’s Ghoul’s face breaking into a grin when Poison walks into a strategy meeting and winds their hands together. It’s Ghoul’s lips against his jaw, a smile in his voice when he says, “Well, you do have your moments.” It’s nights when Poison wakes up to see Ghoul ghosting trembling fingers over the constellation on his arm and curls them together, tight, so the galaxy outside can’t get in. It’s Ghoul running across a treehouse catwalk and Poison kissing him, picking him up by the waist and spinning both of them around, Ghoul laughing into his mouth. It’s the new Republic dawning in front of them, a promise of safety that has Poison thinking maybe, maybe, they’ll be okay. 

It’s three words on Endor, with a whip-quick smile and a blaster hidden under Ghoul’s arm.

Poison was in love the second they got to Hoth and Ghoul had smiled a challenge in his direction and said “keeping up alright?” And it wasn’t until Ghoul had kissed him in a shadowy corner of Poison’s starship that he had believed maybe Ghoul loved him too. 

Poison presses a kiss to Ghoul’s gloved palm, smiles at him when Ghoul squeezes his hand. 

“I love you,” he says. Ghoul smiles back, eyes soft, and laughs.

“I know.”


End file.
